


When Sorrows Come

by jekyll_inside



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jekyll_inside/pseuds/jekyll_inside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The best teachers are the ones that have overcome adversity, Charles, not the ones who have never experienced it."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Erik stays with Charles and the others to help rebuild the school, but Charles has lost faith in himself.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Sorrows Come

**Author's Note:**

> I do enjoy writing deep meaningful duologues like these (sorry if it's a bit dialogue-heavy in the second part!) but methinks I'm going to break out into some lighter AU settings soon (did someone say coffee shop AU?). Hope you enjoy ^_^

Charles had never yelled like that before.

The whole room went silent, Ororo, Hank, Logan, all staring. Erik's face fell into an expression that was hard and unreadable.

"Professor, I'm-I'm sorry, I was just-" Hank began shakily, pushing his glasses up and looking very pale.

"Well I don't have all the bloody answers, do I?" Charles said, voice too harsh and anger in his darkly circled eyes. "I've already given up my home for this damn school, aren't you all meant to be _helping_ , rather than just looking to me to do everything as per bloody usual?"

"Charles," Erik scolded softly.

He only glanced in his direction before returning his bloodshot gaze to the others. The German's presence was a constant cool weight in the corner of his awareness that he was trying to ignore as much as possible.

"I don't know if we'll have the capacity," he continued, his accent sharpening the sardonic tone. "I don't know if we'll get any government funding. You asked me to start using Cerebro again to bring students to us. Now when the students arrive you complain that I've found too many. I can't put a bloody dimmer switch on this, Hank!" he cried, putting a slightly shaking hand on the side of his untidy head. "If I remember correctly, I expressed a desire to be able to  _walk_ rather than use the damn machine, so I'm sorry if my sacrifice has been so _inconvenient_ for everybody!"

_Don't take it out on them, Charles._

The projection caught the professor off guard and he glared at Erik, angry that the man leaning against the bookshelf was so calm and collected when he felt like screaming.

"Oh, fuck off, Erik," was his brilliant, biting reply, before he spun his chair with a scowl and rolled out of his office, taking the storm with him. Erik watched him go, his eyes staying on the empty doorway. After a heavy beat of silence, the others timidly began to speak again.

"Hank, don't worry about it," Ororo murmured soothingly, reaching across from where she sat on the edge of the desk to put a hand on his shoulder. Hank's eyes were suspiciously bright when he nodded and looked at his shoes, his mouth turned down unhappily.

"The professor sure is a nice guy recently," Logan grumbled, arms crossed tightly over his chest opposite the bookshelf. Then Erik suddenly straightened up and headed out of the office, moving with his usual determined energy now that he'd made a decision. None of them needed to ask where he was going.

✫

Night falls slowly over the Westchester estate. The great expanse of blue sky darkens reluctantly as the sun sets somewhere beyond the western tree line, and on fall nights like this one it's possible to see the moon rising while half the sky is still clinging to the pale daylight. Erik followed the snaking gravel path that curved round the side of the house, startling some bird with the crunch of his shoes and sending it warbling into the sky. His grey eyes tracked it. A finch of some kind. Charles would have been able to tell him exactly what species it was. He would probably have recited its entire hierarchy of taxa, then launched into an animated explanation of how Charles Darwin found evidence for evolution simply from finch beak shapes.

_Beak shapes, Erik. Imagine how exciting it must have been for him to see evidence of his theory all around him!_  

Erik smiled a little. He couldn't remember much of that conversation, but he remembered the kiss that interrupted it. Charles' startled little laugh.

"Erik!"

Erik nearly jumped out of his skin, swearing as Peter suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Sorry," the kid grinned, pulling his goggles off. Silently congratulating himself for not obeying the normal defensive reflex and seriously harming the unexpected visitor, Erik eyed him warily, nerves settling.

"What is it, Peter?

"The professor's looking for you."

Erik blinked. "What? He is?" That didn't happen any more, not unless Charles wanted to yell at him for something that wasn't his fault in any way - he still hadn't worked out why he did that.

"Well, he's not and he is," Peter corrected. When he saw Erik's dark look he hurried on. "I mean, he's by the lake, and when I ran past he was, like, projecting or whatever."

"About me?"

"No..." Peter ran a hand through his strange hair, and Erik suddenly realised the kid's 'whatever' attitude was a front. Peter looked uncomfortable, worried even, and it had been bad enough for him to want to come to Erik.

"Peter, tell me," he ordered quietly.

The kid seemed grateful for the opportunity. "He's doing that thing where he just... stares off into space for hours. And I could hear like a hundred people yelling... in his head. I don't know why I thought I should tell you, but-"

Erik's stomach dropped but his military mind engaged quickly. "No, good job Peter. I want you to take me to him, okay?"

He nodded, putting on his goggles and bracing Erik's head with a hand. "Close your eyes or you'll throw up."

The older mutant obeyed, and the next second his whole body was flung forward. He grit his teeth, wind roaring in his ears, then they were suddenly stationary again.

"Thanks," he managed to mutter, opening his eyes to a completely different part of the grounds. The house was quite far behind them, his shoes now in soft grass that sloped down to the lake. The water was like a perfect sheet of glass, reflecting the dove colours of the fading sky. Peter glanced toward the lake with his mouth pressed into a line, before disappearing, a trail of flattened grass the only sign of his route back to the house.

Erik turned to the lake. About 20 metres away, at the lapping edges of the still expanse, the man he'd been looking for sat. His figure was the only upright thing for half a mile of stretching lawn and water. It sounded like a radio had been left on somewhere, a quiet babble of voices in the air, and Erik grimaced, hearing their clashing tones and knowing it was only a fraction of what Charles could hear.

Between rage and serenity. Erik focused himself until the unwanted voices faded from his mind, the projection successfully blocked. Then he walked towards the source of them. The breeze was cooler here, any warmth greedily taken under the surface of the water, and Charles' white shirt was fluttering slightly in the moving currents. His shoes, Erik noticed when he reached his side, were halfway submerged in the clear, cold water. Erik didn't need to notice his friend's shivering in order to take off his leather jacket - he felt cold just looking at the younger man.

"Put this on, Charles."

His chest tightened when the professor silently looked up at him, only moving his eyes. Erik couldn't tell if he was giving him a stubborn refusal or was too zoned out to care about anything.

"Charles," he repeated. Charles looked out at the water again, and just as Erik was about to threaten that he'd  _make_ him wear the damn thing if he had to, the telepath reached out a hand for the jacket. When he put it on, leaning forward and pushing his arms through the sleeves, his expression tightened a little with pain. The look was becoming so common it was was starting to leave tired lines on his skin.

But the jacket smelled of Erik. He pulled it a little tighter round himself.

"Your feet are in the water," its owner murmured after a while of quiet, grey eyes on the grey surface. German winters had toughened his body, and as he sat on the grass next to Charles' chair in only shirtsleeves he didn't notice the cold skimming over the lake.

"Are they?" Charles replied, voice quiet and flat.

"You know they are."

"Perhaps I'll get frostbite and never walk again."

Erik looked up at his old friend's face for a moment, then quietly let out a breath, joining him in surveying the lake. A dragonfly caught his eye, goldish brown and dancing over the surface of the water. Never, he decided, was a devastating word.  'Never' ruled out any chances, any hope of another option. It was defiant in its confidence, in its certainty that no matter what you did, you could never prove it wrong. _Never walk again._

"Four-spotted Skimmer."

It took a moment for Erik to register the professor's words, and his heart lifted a little - Charles was watching the dragonfly too. "Oh yeah?"

"Hmm.  _Libellula quadrimaculata._ " The insect dipped and rose, oblivious of its observers. "We have them in the UK too," he continued, and Erik looked faithfully up at him again. "We call them chasers, though, not skimmers. Used to see them on the Thames in Oxford."

Then a tear dropped down Charles' face.

Erik's stomach twisted and he sat up straighter. "Charles.."

"I know I'm not very good company at the moment Erik but would you mind staying?"

"Of course not."

"I didn't mean to be like that with Hank, or with you," he said quietly, shining eyes now fixed on the tree line across the lake. He spoke with the slight haste of someone desperate to convey something but not really knowing how.

"It's fine, Charles. I.. I'll stay, of course I will," Erik said, gently.

Then the professor's whole body - well, from the waist up - tensed. "My mind is so broken, Erik", he suddenly blurted, half angry, half terribly frustrated. "Who am I to start a school? To teach children?"

Erik turned himself to face his friend and prised a white-knuckled hand off one of the chair's armrests to hold in his larger one. "The best teachers are the ones that have overcome adversity, Charles, not the ones who have never experienced it."

The professor swallowed, glancing down at his face and seeing stubborn resolve there. "But Erik, you don't understand-"

"I do," he interrupted earnestly. "I do understand. Remember when you told me how scary it can be inside your own head, but if you have.. if you have faith you can make sense of it all?"

"I was talking about you, my friend," Charles replied. "Not me."

"But we're the same, you and I," Erik insisted, squeezing his hand. Charles only smiled sadly. The German watched him, saw that resignation that made him feel sick, and knelt up to hold the telepath's gaze levelly. "Charles, stop it. You keep acting like you've given up."

"What if I have?" he asked him honestly in reply, turning those tired blue eyes to his. The words felt like a punch to the gut.

"Like hell," Erik bit out, refusing to believe his wonderful optimist had finally lost hope. "You'll get better. Shut up, Charles, you haven't give up yet."

A ghost of amusement crossed the telepath's face. "Erik.."

"Stop talking like that, you sound like you're on your goddamn deathbed!" he hissed, gripping his hand tightly between them. "You're the optimist, Charles. I'm the one that's meant to mope around and hate myself, not you!"

"And where did that get me?" Charles cried suddenly. "What did I achieve, Erik? There's no school here!" He threw an arm back towards the old, weary house. "No children learning! I'm... I'm a drug addict who can't look after the people he loves any better than himself." Tears filled his bloodshot eyes and made Erik want to kill whoever had done this to the one he loved. But that, of course, would be suicide.

"Charles-"

"I wish Raven was here," he whispered, grimacing as the tears tracked down his face and looking away to the far side of the water. Erik fell silent, hurt lancing across his chest. But he had no right to feel that way - of course he was no substitute for his sister.

"She'll come home when she's ready," the older man eventually said, sitting back on his heels. Their clasped hands rested on Charles' leg.

"You don't know her like I do, my friend." Charles' blue eyes seemed to cloud over. "She fights wars even after she's won." He sighed. "I messed up with her even more than I messed up with you."

"You didn't mess up with me. I... Everything that happened was my doing."

"But I could have tried to rectify the situation, Reached out to you after Cuba.."

Erik almost laughed, and told him that was ridiculous. Blue eyes met his.

"Wouldn't you have wanted that?" the telepath asked.

"That's not what I mean. I-" Erik faltered, realising what he'd been about to say. _I was the one that left you when you needed me_. Charles studied his friend's face. The hard angles of his jaw, the small sharp scars on his cheek. The way his gaze darkened when he looked inwards. After a few moments, loud with both men's thoughts, Charles murmured:

"Look at us." Erik lifted his eyes, coming back from thoughts. "We're the blind leading the blind."

The other man smiled a little. "So we are the same."

"I would never wish my telepathy on you, Erik."

"Well you can't have my mutation either," he returned, hearing that tone creeping back into Charles' voice and steering them away from it. "You'd be downright dangerous."

A hint amusement burned away some of the melancholy in Charles' eyes, and Erik watched it go with a stirring of hope in his chest. "More dangerous than I am already? I could make you do anything. Discover your deepest secrets," he mused, tone exaggerated and showing that he really had no interest whatsoever in the idea.

"You already know my deepest secret, Charles," Erik said in a curious way. They held each other's gazes for a moment. The dragonfly, who had been watching them both, landed on the surface of the lake, standing on the feet of its reflection. Then:

"Let's go inside." Erik stood up, pulling his hand from Charles' and hastily brushing the grass off his dark jeans. Why on earth had he said that? Charles was sure to work out what that meant!

"Erik..?"

"Come on, we don't want to miss dinner," he said lightly, before starting to walk away across the lawn to the house.

"Erik-" Charles turned his chair, shoes gliding out of the water and sending the dragonfly speeding away as he started to follow his friend. Erik was positively retreating. "What do you mean? What secret?" he called after him, now intrigued.

The other man pretended not to hear, glad at least that his stupid words were bringing Charles back into the house.

 


End file.
